“I was nineteen,” he said.

  Nineteen, and suddenly the man of the house. She wanted to gather him up and hold him. But she knew he wouldn’t have it. So she waited for him to finish.

  “So that was to be my life. I would sweep streets and then fight in them. And care for my mother and Rose and Stanley, and pay for that flat that suddenly didn’t seem like a palace so much as a prison.” He gave a little self-deprecating laugh. “Of course, now I live in two rooms myself.”

  “Don’t you disparage this place,” she said. “I’m very fond of it.”

  “I don’t need more than it,” he said. “But if I had a wife . . . a family . . . I could afford more. I’d buy a house somewhere. With a garden. Not like Mayfair, but enough to keep a few little girls happy.”

  The words, easy, like he’d thought of them before, made her chest tight. She imagined herself in that garden. Imagined those little girls with blue eyes like their father and black curls like . . . She swallowed around the knot in her throat and was grateful that they had to be quiet. “That sounds wonderful.”

  He looked at her for a long moment and she would have given the entire contents of her carpetbag to know what he was thinking. Instead, he looked to the ceiling and said, “I used to dream of it back then. I’d come home aching from the work and I’d fall into bed and I’d think . . .” He took a deep breath and kept going, the next bit coming quickly, like if he didn’t let it out it might go wild within him. “Maybe, someday, I’d find a girl and she’d ignore my filthy boots and the calluses on my hands from the broom, and the raw knuckles from the fights, and she’d give me a child or two and we’d revisit the sins of my father.”

  She did reach for him, then. She couldn’t stop herself, her fingers tracing the edge of his beard, the long line of his nose, the angle of his jaw. “But you didn’t revisit them.”

  He shook his head. “My mother was terrified of the prospect. She summoned Adams, and he took me to Whitehall, where Peel was building the police. I resisted the job at first. I’d been roughed up on more than one occasion by Runners drunk on limitless power.” He paused. “But after a few weeks, I could see a path that my father hadn’t had. A way to change everything. A new destiny. Rewrite my future, and with it, have enough for my mother not to have to work any longer, for Rose to find a good man, for Stanley to have a different life. I thought I might be able to make a difference. I thought I might . . .”

  He trailed off, and she recognized something in his expression. “You thought you might change the world.”

  He looked to her, amusement in his eyes. “Changing the world isn’t a dream for a boy from Shoreditch. You start with changing yourself. Your path.”

  “We unravel the thread we can.” She lifted her chin. “The world looks different for different people.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “I’m beginning to see yours is much bigger than mine. And still, you work to change it.”

  “It’s a more tempting goal than any other I’ve imagined.”

  Tommy watched her for a long moment, his eyes searching hers before he said, soft and dark and wicked, “I’ve one closer to home.”

  Could he mean her?

  She blushed, unable to believe it. Too afraid to face the words in her reply.

  Too eager for them to be true.

  So she settled for “You know, there’s nothing wrong with filthy boots, Tommy.”

  He stared at the ceiling, the candlelight flickering above them, his hand rough over the impossibly silk skin of her shoulder. “When was the last time you cleaned a pair of boots, my lady?”

  I would learn. For you.

  She didn’t say it. But he heard it anyway. “Imogen,” he said softly, urgently. “I told you all this because tonight . . . what we did . . . what I did . . . Christ. I was supposed to . . .”

  No. She could hear his guilt in the words, and she hated it. He was going to apologize to her. He was going to make it all seem like a mistake. “Don’t,” she said. “Please.”

  “Imogen—you are so far above me . . .”

  “Stop,” she whispered. “It is my turn to talk. My turn to tell you that I have dreamed of this. Of being here, in your arms.”

  He took a deep breath, his arm pulling her closer. “Imogen—”

  “Don’t,” she repeated, knowing what was to come. Knowing he was going to dismiss her. Knowing that it was for the best. There were too many secrets between them. Secrets that, when brought to light, would change everything.

  So she didn’t confess her feelings. She didn’t say what she wanted to say.

  Didn’t tell him she wanted to be that wife. Or give him those children. Or live in that house with the garden that he’d built in her mind, so real that it felt like a memory.

  She didn’t tell him she loved him.

  Instead, she simply said, “Please, Tommy, let me hold tomorrow at bay. Just for a moment. Let me imagine, just for tonight, that this is real.”

  He was silent for an age—long enough that she wondered if he’d fallen asleep, even as she could feel the tension in his body, at all the places where they touched.

  And then, finally, finally, he stroked his big, warm hand over her skin once more. A decision. An agreement. A vow.

  “Tonight,” he said. “I shall imagine it, too.”

  They did imagine it, falling asleep once more, wrapped in each other’s arms, until dawn crept over the horizon, and Imogen slid from his bed before the rest of the house woke, slipping out into the snow, knowing everything had changed.

  Loving him.

  Seeing him clearly.

  Believing him.

  And hoping that he would believe her, too.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  When the girl knocked at his office door, Tommy had never been more grateful for an interruption.

  Imogen had left him that morning, somehow sneaking from his arms, leaving him in the deepest sleep he’d had in a long time, sated by her touch and satisfied with her nearness. He’d woken with the scent of her on his sheets and still hanging in the cool air of the room, the only sign that she’d been there at all.

  The moment he opened his eyes, he’d sensed her absence, coming to his feet almost instantly, a desperate frustration flaring in his chest. Where had she gone?

  I have dreamed of this. Of being here, in your arms.

  Why hadn’t she waited for him to take her home?

  Let me imagine, just for tonight, that this is real.

  Was she safe in the snow? On the streets? In the cold? Had she found her way home?

  Of course she was. She was Imogen Loveless. But it didn’t change the fact that he worried.

  Tommy had washed and dressed in scant minutes, leaving his rooms and hurrying downstairs, eager to get to her. To be certain she was safe. To fetch her. To bring her back and tuck her into his bed and keep her there, where he could see her. Touch her. Kiss her.

  Love her.

  Of course, none of it was possible. The night was over and outside the streets had been swept of their snow, and in the cacophony of morning carriages and hawkers making their way through Holborn, Tommy was reminded that she wasn’t for him to love. That she wasn’t for him to keep.

  That she wasn’t for Holborn, and five-month babes, and coming down from her Mayfair palace to love him. Even if she said she didn’t want an aristocratic marriage, the alternative—justice, vengeance, world saving—it was too bright for him. Too bold. Too much—not because she was too much, but because he was not enough. It was best that she’d left, because the more time they spent together, the more difficult it would be for him to let her go in the end.

  So he’d gone to work, throwing himself into the files he’d compiled on the explosions throughout the East End, knowing that whatever Adams and the rest of the Yard thought of his obsession with these particular crimes, he would do anything he could to solve them.

  To bring whoever was harming women in those bright worlds, out of view, to justice.

  For the East End, yes. But now for Imogen, as well.

  To try, however impossibly, to be more for her. To be enough.

  She’d given him more to work with—now he knew that O’Dwyer and Leafe operated a moving women’s clinic, providing illegal tinctures and tonics and procedures to women who were in difficult situations. Who needed care. Who wanted to change their futures, or protect them.

  That, combined with the knowledge that whoever was wreaking havoc on the East End was well funded and skilled, suggested that Tommy was looking for aristocrats. Men who were angry and vocal about women. About suffrage. About freedom. About equality.

  Men who could easily have used the law to punish, but instead chose a simpler, less public way—a way that would protect their reputations if they could keep their hands clean.

  Which begged the question—who was getting dirty?

  He’d made a list of a dozen lords, every one of them rich and furious, and with each name his breathing came faster, as he realized that whoever Imogen was up against, she was in more danger than he’d imagined.

  And still, she faced that danger without hesitation. Heading toward it—and justice—every time. What had she said? The fight is in the movement.

  She was magnificent. The way she’d stitched his arm on the docks after dismantling the explosives in Mithra Singh’s warehouse as though she did it every day. How she’d come running to save him from the original O’Dwyer and Leafe’s. The taste of her when she’d kissed him on the street last night.

  The feel of her naked in his bed. Taking him. Meeting his movements—not a fight. A gift.

  And still, she’d left him. And he had no reason to go to her until the following evening, when he would play guardian and suffer watching her attend a dinner filled with men who did not deserve her, each vying for her hand—a toff’s version of a medieval tourney.

  If only it was a medieval tourney.

  He might not hold a candle to these men when it came to land stewardship or buying a damn horse or reciting fucking Shakespeare, but in combat? With a sword in hand? A lance?

  He’d crush them.

  And he’d go to her, covered in sweat and blood, and kneel before her for even a moment of her approval. Hell, if it were a medieval tourney, he’d toss her over his shoulder and steal her away, his strength all he needed to be worthy of her.

  But it wasn’t a medieval tourney. It was 1840, and sweat and blood were now money and power and privilege, and Tommy Peck was not invited to vie for Lady Imogen’s hand.

  The night was over. And it was tomorrow.

  And he would be smart to give her up.

  But if he found something he could share with her about the crimes they were both so committed to solving . . . then he wouldn’t have to wait to see her.

  For business. Not pleasure.

  He cursed in the empty room and returned to his files, searching for something new in the reports and scant eyewitness accounts. He grew more and more frustrated, and his mind turned again and again to Imogen, who still hadn’t told him everything she knew. Who kept secrets from him.

  Punishment cannot come from within.

  What did it mean? Together, they’d brought down several of the most powerful men in Britain—she’d come to him with those files, blue, inked with an indigo bell. And each one had sent a man who deserved it to prison.

  He did not imagine for one moment that the Belles had failed to compile similar files for those behind these crimes. She knew more than he did.

  Of course she did. She’d tampered with his crime scenes, unraveling his control over them with her carpetbag full of vials and jars and whatever else she’d collected. And that lack of control should have infuriated him. But it didn’t.

  Now, he was infuriated that she’d brought chaos into his world and hadn’t let him watch. That she didn’t trust him to stand by her side as she meted out her justice.

  That she didn’t offer him a place in her chaos.

  Tommy cursed harshly in the empty room, and a knock sounded on the door, equally harsh.

  He shot to his feet, his heart pounding. Imogen. “Come.”

  The door opened, revealing a young girl, no more than twelve or thirteen, with a round face and an expression in her bright brown eyes that he recognized immediately. She knew things he did not, and was enjoying it.

  His pulse raced. He’d seen that particular expression in Imogen’s eyes a dozen times. There was no question that she’d sent this girl, who crossed his office with efficient speed that reminded him of the lady herself, as though she had important business and he was a mere stop on the way to it.

  She dropped a tiny curtsy as he stood to greet her. “Detective Inspector Peck?”

  “You’ve the better of me.”

  A flash of a smile, so familiar. She wasn’t going to tell him her name. The Hell’s Belles trained their vast network of informants and spies and runners well. There was absolutely no need for this girl to be noticed by Scotland Yard, so names were irrelevant. Indeed, they were a liability inside this building. Instead, the girl dug into a pocket sewn deep into her skirts and extracted a small square of paper.

  “For you.”

  He took it, his heart racing with anticipation. “Thank you.”

  The girl nodded once and, task complete, took off. Tommy followed her to the doorway, watching as she snaked through a group of constables who barely had time to notice her before she was off, down the hallway, headed for the exit onto Scotland Yard.

  In and out in seconds, her work done, leaving barely a trace. In that, she was nothing like her employer, who had no hesitation being found in the uniform room, and preferred calling cards the size of holes in the side of jail cells.

  Full of anticipation, Tommy looked down at the square of paper in his hands. He opened it, confusion flaring for a heartbeat as he turned it over, revealing that it was blank on both sides. He couldn’t help the wide smile that came with the understanding of what she’d done. A thrill rioted through him, and he reached into his desk drawer, extracting a box of matches.

  It was a secret message.

  Maybe it would read the same as the last, but with a different author.

  I love you.

  He pushed the ridiculous thought away and struck a match, holding it beneath the paper as he held his breath.

  Words appeared.

  Not just words.

  A bell, just like the ones that had been inked on the files she’d provided him in the past. But this one, not in indigo ink. This one, in goat’s-lettuce juice. And beneath it:

  Salisbury Steps

  4 o’clock

  She was going to tell him what they knew.

  Dropping the paper to his desk, Tommy sucked in a breath and pulled out his pocket watch. Half-past three. If he hurried, he’d get there before her.

  He snatched his coat and hat from the hook by the door and was down the hallway before he had them on, stopping only when someone shouted his name behind him. He turned to find Adams standing at a distance, a stack of papers in his hand, approaching at a clip.

  Tommy shook his head. “No time, Wallace. I’ve somewhere to be.”

  “Somewhere to be? Or someone to be with?” Something must have flashed on Tommy’s face, because Adams lifted his brows with a knowing look. “I know that look; don’t get that girl in trouble, Tommy.”

  “On the contrary,” Tommy replied to the older man, unable to keep the smile from his face, already turning away, eager to get to her. “She’s finally going to let me keep her safe.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Tommy pushed his way through The Brazen Beaver tavern, which stood at the top of the Salisbury Steps, a well-trafficked set of Waterman’s Stairs that were the closest access point to Covent Garden from the Thames. The tavern’s rear entrance—or front entrance, depending upon how one looked at it—opened onto a small courtyard into which anyone coming up from the river would be welcomed for food or ale.

  Imogen wasn’t inside the tavern, and she wasn’t in the courtyard behind, so Tommy stepped to the edge of the embankment, leaning over the low stone wall to check the steps themselves. The top few were covered with a layer of well-trodden snow from the night before, and though the river was not yet low, it had receded enough to reveal another handful of steps that were usually under water, slick with the green muck that was sure to give anyone who wasn’t careful an icy dip.

  A bone-chilling wind whipped up the Thames, and Tommy pulled his coat tight around him.

  “I did not expect it to be so cold.” He startled at the words, so close, her shoulder barely an inch from his arm—so close that if he leaned in, they would touch.

  He could keep her warm.

  He cleared his throat and turned toward her, blocking as much of the wind as he could, and he took her in, her face turned to the sky, the sun setting in the west casting a golden glow over her dark curls. Her lips and cheeks were bright red as she flashed a smile up at him, and he distracted himself from the way he wanted to kiss her by cataloguing her clothes—a thick, fur-lined, grass green coat over a purple dress—the skirts bright and beautiful like the prettiest summer lilacs.

  One did not have to be a dressmaker to know that the colors were not considered appropriate for winter, but they were appropriate for Imogen, and that was all that mattered. “You don’t look cold. You look like a summer garden.”

  He immediately regretted the words, and then felt a different thing altogether when she grinned and ducked her face into the fur collar of her bright green coat. “Be careful, Mr. Peck, or I’ll start thinking you like me.”

  “I am on the record for liking you, my lady,” he said, keeping the words quiet, loving the way her cheeks pinkened in their wake.

  “I like you, too,” she said simply.

  His chest tightened and he asked the question he should not. “Then why did you leave me last night?”

  After a moment’s pause, Imogen looked over her shoulder, indicating the path along the embankment. “It will be warmer if we walk.”